What do American employers owe their employees with mental health conditions

This situation will become more prevalent thanks to the pandemic.

Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC
7 min readJul 15, 2021

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This article will start with a general discussion on accommodations and then move on to the specifics of a mental health condition.

Is the employer required to provide accommodations?

Unless one of the following extremely narrow conditions applies, employers must “engage in the interactive process,” which means talk to the employee when an accommodations request is made.

1. The employer is too small

All employers with fifteen or more employees have a duty to provide reasonable accommodations such as assistance or changes to a position or workplace that will enable an employee to do their job despite having a disability. If you have less than 15 employees, you are exempt from the requirement to provide reasonable accommodations UNLESS your state has a local law that…

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Sheri Byrne-Haber, CPACC

LinkedIn Top Voice for Social Impact 2022. UX Collective Author of the Year 2020. Disability Inclusion SME. Sr Staff Accessibility Architect @ VMware.